


The CFVY Co-Op

by Liara_90



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Polyamory, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 19:23:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10577892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liara_90/pseuds/Liara_90
Summary: Spurred by the prompt:Blizzard hit town and this little coffee shop is the only thing open/has power + CFVY ShopTeam CFVY coffee shop. Light-hearted fluff.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Initially prompted by [Lydia Rogue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lydia_rogue/pseuds/lydia_rogue/), CFVY maven extraordinaire. See the original version on Tumblr [here](http://pvoberstein.tumblr.com/post/158828413818/cfvy-co-op). If you're interested in submitting your own prompts, look [here](http://pvoberstein.tumblr.com/post/158765306598/rwby-au-asks).

_9:18 AM_

“By all means, take your time,” growled Fox, listening to Coco’s keys jingling together in the wind. “It’s only about ten degrees below freezing.”

“I told you to wear a hat,” Coco muttered back in reply, _finally_ finding the key to the coffee shop’s back door. She had to give it a bit of a shoulder-check to get it open - the snow had practically sealed it overnight - but Coco was soon blowing hot breath onto numbed fingers so she could punch in the code to disable the alarm.

Fox followed her in across the threshold. “I don’t like having my ears covered,” he said, repeating a conversation they’d probably had a thousand times this winter alone. He yanked the door shut behind them. “Need to make the most of the four senses I still have.”

Coco rolled her eyes. “Then at least wear some gloves,” she chided, pulling Fox’s hands out of the pockets of his jacket. “Your fingers are practically frost-bitten.”

And somehow, without a thought, hers were over his, body heat flowing from skin to skin. They entwined, held together for a wordless moment, before Fox raised Coco’s hands to his face. His lips planted a soft kiss atop skin, red and blue from the cold outside.

Being blind didn’t keep him from knowing that Coco was blushing, just a little.

“The storm’s supposed to be getting worse this afternoon,” Coco noted, ending the little moment, her hands slipping from his. Fox re-oriented himself and began going through the motions of opening the café for business.

“Yeah, I got a weather alerted texted to me,” he confirmed, flipping the switches to what he’d been told were the exterior lights. “Hope Velvet and Yatsu make it in okay.”

* * *

_Coco Adel had mellowed considerably since her teenage years. Back then it had all been “revolutionary chic”, partially because it felt right to a spirited teen, and mostly because it annoyed her parents to no end. Che Guevara t-shirts and black leather pants, quoting_ Das Kapital _and Fidel Castro to anyone who would listen._

_She’d matured a bit with age, swapping out Che’s Red Star-emblazoned beret for a simple Parisian one, but her underlying worldview hadn’t changed all that much. She was a millionaire’s daughter who could never live quite the same life of heartless capitalism her parents had. She hadn’t lost any of her taste for high fashion or flashy cars, none of the luxuries of the bourgeoisie, but she wanted to do it_ better.

_Which was why, when an old and not particularly busy laundromat had folded, just off the university campus, Coco had leapt at the opportunity to start something_ her _way. Not just a business but a co-operative, all of her ‘employees’ having an ownership stake, a democratic say in how things were run. Profits were shared amongst themselves or re-invested in the shop itself._

_Technically, you had to be a member of the CFVY Co-op to buy anything there, though the membership application process involved a ten-second card-filling process and a one-time initiation fee. The overwhelming majority of their customers were students from the adjacent university, and nobody seemed to mind the momentary hassle. Not to mention that it added a sense of community that you just didn’t get at any of the four Starbucks within walking distance._

_With that business plan in hand, even Fox hadn’t had any reasonable complaints about working there._

* * *

_3:43 PM_

“And that’s one extra large hot chocolate with whipped cream for here. An _excellent_ choice, I might add,” said Velvet with a grin, her fingers tapping away at the register’s touch-screen as she spoke. A childhood spent Down Under hadn’t done much to psychologically prepare Velvet for the (apparently-weekly) snowstorms she now faced, but said snowstorms _had_ introduced her to hot chocolate, which hadn’t really been part of her Queensland upbringing. “Anything else I can get for you?”

“Just your phone number,” replied the man on the other side of the counter, a wolfish grin on his face. “When do you get off?”

Velvet’s finger slipped on the screen, tapping the wrong button, and forcing her to start the order from scratch. She shook her head. “Sorry, can’t give out my number. Store policy, the boss would kill me” Velvet explained, offering a weak smile as she did. It actually _wasn’t_ (she also didn’t technically have a 'boss’ in the conventional sense) but Coco had assured her that it was a quick  & easy method of dissuading would-be paramours. It almost always worked.

_Almost_. “Come on, gorgeous, just a couple of drinks at this place downtown. You’ll love it, I promise.”

Plan B was less subtle. “Sorry, I’m dating someone.” (That was _also_ technically untrue, but a lot quicker than explaining 'I’m dating several people’ to someone she had no desire to converse with). Men (usually) took that explanation a lot better than a flat 'I’m just not interested in you’, and unlike Coco, Velvet wasn’t much for confrontation…

“I’m sure they won’t mind sharing,” the patron replied. Velvet had tapped the button for VISA but he still hadn’t swiped his card, her screen unblinking in the face of his inaction.

“I’m up for sharing her,” came the voice of someone much better-suited for confrontation. A hand came to a gentle rest between Velvet’s shoulder blades. “Just not with you.” Coco had an ability to pour a quite frankly _absurd_ quantity of menace into such a gentle tone. “Pay for your drink and leave.”

The man on the other side of the counter blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Read the sign,” growled Coco, gesturing with one finger to a chalkboard behind her. The one on which she’d scrawled, in flowing cursive: _We Have Zero Tolerance For Harassment_.

“Hey, I paid for this drink,” he replied, hurriedly doing so. “And it’s like a fucking snowstorm out there.”

“Oh, no, did something make the environment unpleasant for you?” There wasn’t an over-abundance of sympathy in Coco’s tone. “Yats- _chan_?”

The man suddenly became aware of a much, _much_ larger man behind him. “Yes, Coco?” asked Yatsuhashi, strolling over from a table he’d been in the middle of wiping down.

“…Fine, be a _bi-_ ” The man spun around to storm off, only to find himself sprawling to the ground a moment later, having somehow completely lost his balance. A disposable cup of hot chocolate was splashed on the floor in front of him. Nobody thought to look at what Yatsuhashi had been doing with his feet.

“I’ll clean that up,” offered Yatsuhashi, a cloth already in hand. “Have a nice day, sir.”

* * *

_4:14 PM_

“So I heard Coco said she was willing to share…” began Fox, his voice seeming to echo in the coffee shop’s cavernous basement.

“Oh _bloody_ hell Fox!” shrieked Velvet, jumping halfway out of her skin as her partner interrupted her inventorying. Her hand clutched her chest. “You were crouched over in total darkness, by the way.”

“Ah. Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Fox apologized, though he wore a smile of mild amusement as he did. It wasn’t the first time a partner had walked into the basement, a dark and windowless sub-level, and had a small heart attack upon discovering he was down there with them.

Fox strolled towards Velvet, and into the part of the basement she’d actually illuminated. He was carrying a milk carton packed with bags of fair trade coffee, fresh from Guatemala, but he set it down on the floor as he approached. “Another asshole didn’t take _no_ for an answer?”

“Welcome to the glamorous life of a barista,” Velvet griped, mostly to herself. She turned her back to Fox, not so much because she didn’t want to talk to him but because-

-Fox’s arms wrapped around her waist, drawing her close to him. _That_ was why. “We’re a pretty exclusive co-op, I hate to tell the guy.”

“ _Only the best_ ,” agreed Velvet, allowing her eyes to drift shut and the clipboard to slip from her hands. She tilted her head back, surrendering her throat to a patter of kisses-

For the second time in three minutes Velvet’s heart skipped a beat at a loud noise, this time that of Coco Adel throwing the door to the basement open. “Hey, lovebirds, I’m not paying you to play Seven Minutes in Heaven down there,” Coco noted, the irritation in her voice at least mostly feigned. (Technically, after all, Coco didn’t pay them at all, they just took their share from the co-op’s revenue.)

Thankfully, Velvet’s heart stopped pounding by the time it was her cue to reply. “What, jealous you weren’t invited?” she teased, batting her eyelashes as she did. Coquettish flirtation didn’t really suit the Aussie, but sometimes it was worth it to see Coco stammer.

And stammer she did, blushing an incandescent shade of scarlet. “Yatsu’s herding everyone out the door,” Coco finally got out, trying to ignore the way Velvet’s hands were tracing the scars on Fox’s forearms. “Give him a hand clearing the tables, would you?”

“Snowstorm’s over?” asked Fox, reluctantly loosening his grip so Velvet could escape back to actual work.

“No,” Coco admitted, stepping aside so Velvet could scamper past her up the stairs. “But it’s an hour after closing and the campus shuttle bus is ferrying people to the dorms again.”

“Aha.” Fox picked his crate up. “Do you need me up there, or should I keep at this?”

“The three of us should be able to handle it,” Coco answered, wiping her hands on her pants. “Though I’m sending Yatsu down to help with the re-stocking in a few minutes. Are you going to distract him?”

“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies,” said Fox with a glib smile.

“It’ll be a Christmas miracle if we get out of here before midnight,” Coco lamented. “At least give me a shout if you two are taking an.. unscheduled break.”

“ _That_ I can do,” Fox promised, recognizing a euphemism when he heard one.

* * *

_11:16 PM_

“Any news yet?” asked Fox, listening to the electronic _clicks_ of Coco typing away on her smartphone’s screen.

“There’s _news_ , just not the kind I want,” Coco answered, just a little testily. If Twitter was anything to go by then power _still_ hadn’t been restored anywhere north of Telares Street, which meant that their flat was almost certainly still in the dark.

“So, who’s up for sleeping here tonight?” proposed Fox, raising an arm overhead as he spoke. “We don’t have to trek across town in a snowstorm _and_ we get to not freeze to death overnight.”

“It’s not exactly _toasty_ in here,” Coco replied, “definitely not late at night.” The front of the café was paneled with floor-to-ceiling windows that - while undeniably pretty - created something of an insulation problem that was noticeable in the quiet hours when the shop was closed and the crowds gone.

“Then we can huddle together for warmth,” Fox suggested, though there was a sarcastic drawl in his voice.

“They’re really like an old married couple,” Velvet said in a stage-whisper, adjusting herself comfortably on Yatsuhashi’s lap. Yatsuhashi was too polite to agree aloud.

“Except we still have sex sometimes,” noted Fox.

“ _Past performance is not an indicator of future results_ ,” muttered Coco, lifting a quote from an old finance textbook.

“I’m fine with staying here, by the way,” Velvet added, adjusting Yatsuhashi’s arms so they more comfortably draped her. “There’re toiletries in the back office, I know.”

Coco relented with a sigh. “ _Fine_. But nobody go _near_ the coffee machine, got it?”

* * *

_1:33 AM_

_Thump thump thump thump_

Coco was really beginning to reconsider her decorating choices for the first time since opening the place. Not that she _disliked_ it, by any means, just that she was beginning to wish she’d tossed in a few couches and the like, so she’d have something other than the floor to crash on.

_Thump thump thump thump_

Yatsuhashi, having borrowed Coco’s iPad, was thumbing through an ebook version of _The Velveteen Rabbit_ , leaning against one of the shop’s walls. Fox, meanwhile, had drifted into a state of semi-consciousness in Yatsuhashi’s lap, arms and head resting comfortably in the crook of a muscled thigh.

_Thump thump thump_

“Velvet!” The name came out more as a shout than Coco had intended it, causing the three others in the room to startle to state of complete awakening. Velvet seemed to leap about a foot in the air at the word.

“ _Gah_ sorry Coco I hope I’m not keeping anyone up it’s just that all of a sudden I’m so restless which is weird because I really should be like hibernating what with the cold and…”

Like any good drug dealer, Velvet knew not to get hooked on her own product. In fact, she tended to avoid the coffee the CFVY Co-op was famous for entirely, sticking to hot chocolates or teas as much as possible. Only the bizarreness of being snowed-in at work, overnight, had caused her to slip…

“…and I was looking over the numbers from last year and I think the Colombian isn’t doing as well as we’d hoped so I was thinking maybe we should follow-up with that Ethiopian grower we met in Austin who said-”

Coco wrapped her arms around Velvet, squeezing the young Aussie in the most loving way possible to force her to take a breath. “Sorry,” Velvet apologized, sheepishly. “I normally fall asleep at the drop of a hat but tonight…”

“It _is_ cold,” supplied Yatsuhashi, setting the tablet down. Fox begrudgingly removed himself from his lover’s lap, but not before a kiss was planted on his head. Yatsuhashi’s arms curled around Fox’s torso, keeping him from drifting far. “Perhaps it _would_ be better if we tried to get… _cozier_.” His English was flawless, but the word still sounded unfamiliar on his tongue.

“Alright, but Fox, you have to swap out for Velvet, because Yats- _chan_ ’s the only one who can keep her still when she’s had this much caffeine.”

“I am _not_ some hyperactive hedgehog that needs to be _held down_ to keep from running around the room,” Velvet protested, even as Yatsuhashi’s hand gently pulled her further into his orbit.

“Nobody’s saying that,” Yatsuhashi reassured her, Velvet’s whole body seeming to go limp to his touch. He guided her down to the carpet of seat cushions they’d pooled as an impromptu bed, Velvet curling up so as to be practically enveloped by her largest lover.

“Well, Coco kind of implied it,” Fox corrected, earning a soft slap on the arm from his oldest friend. He lay down on his new spot on the floor, beside the crescent-within-a-crescent cuddle of Velvet and Yatsuhashi. Velvet’s hands reached out, finding his scruffy copper hair, and tugged him closer until their bodies formed a near-seal.

Coco half-chuckled, half-groaned as she yielded to Fox’s _come hither_ gesture, lying on one side so he could drape an arm over her. She’d been using Yatsuhashi’s trench coat as a blanket - it was certainly large enough - but Fox’s arm was somehow so much warmer.

“Kind of cozy after all,” Fox said, speaking in a whisper low enough that not even Velvet could make out his words. His lips found a patch of bare neck, sending shivers up Coco’s spine. “I don’t know why you were so opposed to this,

Coco’s mind raced through answers to his query. They all reeked of coffee grounds. Her mattress was infinitely comfier than the floor. Her 'shower’ had consisted of splashing some water from the brewing sink. She’d never gone camping once in her life for this exact reason…

"Neither do I.”

* * *

_Fox had initially wanted to call it “The Coffee Shop”, a tongue-in-cheek jab at pretentiously-named dining establishments. He hurriedly amended it to “just 'Coffee Shop’ - it’s cleaner”, paraphrasing_ The Social Network _as he did. Coco had taken it from there, suggesting they replace “Coffee” with “CFVY”, pronounced the same way, based on an acronym of the four founding members’ names. Yatsuhashi, with a stickler-ness only someone who’d scored 120/120 on the TOEFEL exam could’ve possessed, pointed out that there was no possible way to slide a 'V-as-in-Victor’ sound into 'coffee’, but he was promptly drowned out._

_Velvet had added the finishing touch, changing it from CFVY Shop to CFVY Co-op. It had a bit more flair, Coco had to concede, and better reflected the spirit of the enterprise._

_CFVY Co-op it was._

* * *

_The morning after…_

A loud _clanging_ the noise, the sound of knuckles on glass, jolted Coco from her slumber. Fox’s arm was still draped around her, his head still tucked in the crook of her neck. With a half-murmured apology Coco slid herself out from his embrace. Fox, drifting on the edge of consciousness, let out a small whimper of disappointment before rolling over, pulling close to Velvet.

Coco _groaned_ slightly as she stretched herself into bipedalism, rubbing her face as she did. Going from sleeping nude in a king-size bed to sleeping fully clothed on the floor of her coffee co-op wasn’t the pleasantest of changes.

She couldn’t tell the time, but it was late enough that the sun had already risen, fresh white snow radiant beneath its rays. Coco glanced around for where her sunglasses had come to rest, fingers curling around 1,000-euro designer frames.

She quickly traced the source of the noise to the door, which someone was rasping on with the need of a genuine coffee addict. Coco grimaced a little. Patrons searching for a morning fix were her bread and butter, but at the same time: _just learn to use a damn coffee maker_.

“Hey, uh, does this place sell coffee?” the man on the other side of the glass-paned door called out, his breaths frosting what parts of the glass weren’t already caked in snow and ice. Must’ve been new, not to recognize the shop.

“Sorry, we’re closed for the, uh, _day_ ,” Coco stated, suddenly unsure as to whether it was still technically 'morning’. She must’ve forgotten to flip the sign over last night. “And the CFVY Co-Op is not currently accepting new members,” Coco said with a small grin, slipping her sunglasses over her eyes, almost without thought.

She flipped the sign to _CLOSED_ and strolled back into the café. _8:32 AM_ , an LCD screen on the dishwasher informed her. She’d overslept compared to her usual routine, but not to the point of neglecting the co-op.

“Time to get up?” mumbled Velvet, immobile as she was between Fox and Yatsuhashi’s still-slumbering forms.

Coco slid into place beside Yatsuhashi, tossing her sunglasses aside as she did. His back was to her, and there was no easy way of positioning herself closer to him, so she settled for pressing her back into his.

“We don’t open 'til 10." 


End file.
